


Miratorium

by lofty



Category: Fire Emblem Heroes, Fire Emblem Series
Genre: Background Sigurd/Deirdre (tm) is happening, Between Arvis and Deirdre, Family Dynamics, Father-Daughter Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Ice Skating, Snow and Ice, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-21
Updated: 2019-01-21
Packaged: 2019-10-13 15:46:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,187
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17490770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lofty/pseuds/lofty
Summary: Memories haunt Arvis with fractal repetition, haunt Deirdre, haunt Julia, sharp as ice and just as cold. But loneliness is a state of mind, and in the deep freeze of winter, he finds solace in how loneliness doesn't always have to be so lonely.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shibopanda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shibopanda/gifts).



> This is a (BELATED) gift for shibopanda! XOXO!!! It used to be so short, but like everything else I plink out on a keyboard, it started growing fangs and talons and tried to eat me. Originally this piece was a lot more light on its toes tone-wise with less of the somber introspection! I hope that you (and anyone else who reads!) enjoy it in spite of my obvious shakiness.
> 
> I oscillated between presenting Arvis as he currently is in Heroes (no memories of FE4: Part Two) and how he might be if he experienced some of the events later in the game, and I ended up picking the latter option. I think the other way would have been interesting in its own right, but this is how it happened. So, uh... without further ado!

She always descends from another world, destined never to be a part of his. 

The dazzling expanse of the moonlit lake glimmers with mystical intrigue, as though the dark scenery cloaked in pristine shrouds of white have opened a portal, and an enchanted storybook world unfolds while the sun is remiss in its vigil. Bathed in luminous, silvery tones, the enigma of night is no longer left to the imagination. And yet, some of the mystery still manages to enrapture.

Deirdre looks right at home in this ethereal plane, as though she materialized from a realm as fey as herself to revel beneath a starry winter sky. Arvis wouldn't be surprised if she were made of something like fairy dust or shimmering gossamer, or something as equally spellbinding but untouchable, ephemeral, a wisp of a woman he had a right to see but never have. 

She brings the ice and moonlight to life as she spins on a ballroom that glistens like quartz. She's dancing, laughing her trickling laugh, and it dips him into a bittersweet trance where memories of her doing it with him sway. He permits himself to sift through incomparably precious sands of his time, one in which he could ignorantly have and not just see, until it slips through him and leaves him empty. He shivers beneath his thick layers. 

Arvis releases a hot stream of breath that fades into the night as he pulls his focus away from reminiscing on his fool's paradise now lost and into the bleak frame of reality: Sigurd had been spinning with her lovingly fixed in his arms for this entire scene. She had never been alone out here; other Heroes slid and tripped across the water's slippery surface — even Julia, hand-in-hand with Sigurd's son — another curious source of rankled deprivation from him; how happy the four of them looked in their mutual company — but for a while, all he wanted to fixate on was her. Dreamy, inveigling. A smile that she bore for him, once upon a time.

Resentment boils in his gut, but her distant shining face coddles it to a tepid stillness. Resentment turns to resignation. Resignation, loneliness. Loneliness, a regret: he lacked the power and foresight to defy his abominable fate. The weakness in his soul chased after her eternal companionship, while the high-minded part of it clung to loftier ideals ever teasing him, always just within grasp. It took retrospect to realize just how wretched the sum of his existence had been in the Grannvale scheme of things. Success, peace, and everlasting love had been intoxicating illusions, and he sobered up far too late to stop his mistakes before he set them into motion. 

Here, even in a land removed from the one besmirched by his sordid history, his ignorant deeds still haunt him. When Deirdre forgot herself a third time, the baser part of Arvis crying for her love schemed to maneuver her true feelings toward him instead, as though he could get away with masquerading in paper lies a second time. However, Sigurd stood between them. Rather than clash against him, he followed the lesson his mistake had taught him at last and didn’t force it. He let her go where her true heart would dictate in the end. Sigurd and Deirdre deserve more than that much.

He had already lost her before. How much more could it hurt a second time?

At least she wears a smile. Would she still do it with him in Sigurd’s stead?

Watching her spellbound by Sigurd's face as though he were the earth and she his faithfully-orbiting moon forces him to swivel around. He recognizes the folly of gazing hopelessly from the shelter of dense conifers. He draws his heavy cloak closed as he departs, which accomplishes nothing in abating the chill enveloping his shoulders when it creeps in from the heart.


	2. Chapter 2

"Ah, careful!"

Warning wasn't enough — Julia skids and tumbles onto the ice, bringing Seliph down with her. Once the dull pain subsides, all it takes is one exchange of startled regret to break into goofy smiles, which cascades into helpless laughter.

"Y-You tripped me!" giggles Julia behind her mitten.

"Did not!" His refute sparkles with mirth. He wobbles like a newborn lamb as he rises from the frozen lake, extending his hand to help Julia ascend, too. "Here, let's—" Unfortunately, her additional weight scatters Seliph's legs in all kinds of different directions until his balance slips and so does he, all over Julia. They wince again. Seliph pushes himself off with his palms and dashes his sights across her for any sign of injury.

"Shoot! Did I hurt you?"

She shakes her head, displacing the embarrassed surprise with a small, flustered smile as she submits another quiet laugh.

"Now you _really_ tripped me..."

Her reaction quells the storm of anxiety brewing within him, and he discovers his smile again. "Yeah, I really can't argue with you there." He backs off from above her, allowing her the space to sit up. More embarrassing, perhaps, is that Seliph's blunder shone a spotlight of ridicule upon him for all in the vicinity. Gray and Tobin share a few guffaws at his expense, and even Sylvia gets in on it while riveted to poor Lewyn’s arm.

"Sheesh! It wasn't _that_ funny!" he protests with burning ears. 

A light touch of his shoulder twists Seliph around to look up at Deirdre. Momentarily, he forgets his trifling burst of shame. The fondness she wears is as soft, touching, and inspiring as a splash of watercolors. Most onlookers had quickly forgotten about his gaffe and started paying attention to Owain's wild spinout instead, but somehow, having his parents witness his slip-up renders him even more sheepish. Nonetheless, seeing them so happy bubbles the same warm sentiment inside his chest. He accepts his mother's hand while taking Julia's for the second try.

"Bwahaha! Hey, Sigurd! Where'd your son inherit his two left feet from, anyway!" booms Bartre among the gaggle of lookie-loos. "Is he really your son?"

The lord knight in question coasts backwards until he arrives at a stop behind Deirdre. "Your myrmidon of a daughter isn't the slickest on ice, herself."

“Hey!”

In the backdrop, Sylvia trips on her way to skip after Owain, which brings Lewyn to his knees. 

"You know what? I'm startin' to think _nobody_ here is!" He raises another robust laugh and focuses on Julia, who had stabilized next to Seliph and holds onto his arm with both of hers. "Hey, wait..." He shuffles closer, a little bit scary thanks to his size, bearing, lack of warning, and an abominable clumsiness befitting of a snow beast; she tightens her hold and presses her cheek against his shoulder, forcing wariness in Seliph. Bartre halts, but closer than he intended as he squints in the wane milky light. "I didn't know you had a daughter, too!"

Sigurd clears his throat. "Actually, she's—"

"She looks just like her mother!" He toggles his sights from Sigurd to Julia to Deirdre and Julia and all over as he prattles on. "Oh, but I can see some resemblance from your side, too; thankfully, not too much! But she certainly has your ears!"

Ears?

Sigurd and Deirdre share in a bout of grave discomfiture as Bartre in all his good intentions divines which parts of Julia could be charted from Sigurd's loins, both unsure how to break it to him against his stentorian glee. Seliph's face darkens, and Julia's pales, and at last, she speaks up against him with a hand raised to clip his observations short lest she never be heard.

"He's, um... not... my father."

This revelation flummoxes poor Bartre, who gawks against his better manners, turns a little pink, and scratches his head. "Then, uh... But I was so sure that… Aw, shucks; this is embarrassing! Forget I said anything, then. I'll be on my— waaaaugh!"

He turns around too abruptly and pays the price by slipping on ice. The thud is so remarkable it splinters the surface a little, stinging his backside with seeping lake water. That prods him to spring up like someone lit a fire there instead. This set another terrible sequence of motions into action, as he flops over face-first and slides like a walrus down the way. Sigurd, Deirdre, Julia, and Seliph all choose to distance themselves from the crack, stifling as much amusement as manageable given the outrageous spectacle. 

"He's way clumsier than me..." mutters Seliph. He watches Julia from the edge of his vision for the smile he hoped might come, but she remains pensive; withdrawn. She had never found it in her to laugh. 

From a third party's perspective, the group appear as a tidy family unit. In many senses, that assumption holds truth, but not to the extent it appears at a first glance. Julia resembles so much of Deirdre that, if he or she understand that Sigurd claimed marriage to her, they always wrongfully assume that Julia had been sired by Sigurd, claim they can see her 'father' in her features. This was wrong, of course. Over the course of experience, Sigurd had come to embrace her like she had been part of his clutch all along, unconcerned about her origins because she was Deirdre's beloved daughter all the same.

Warmth flickers inside her at the love and acceptance they pour out for her in spite of the two major things working against her: she’s the product of a wrongful union, and her mother had her most precious memories of her abolished. When Sigurd had reunited with his estranged wife, he did all in his power to stoke those memories anew — told her all about how they met, their dreams, their struggles, and the life they built before she'd been stolen from him; took her to places that resembled somewhere they had been before; eased her into feeling comfortable with who she was, who she had been, and who she could still be now. The way she smiles at two of her children... Sometimes, it’s almost as though she hadn't forgotten at all. Slowly, happily, and sometimes painfully, she wipes the layers of dust that conceal her broken reflection away, recollecting the shards of who she had been under the forgetful haze, even when they cut into her.

There were parts Sigurd hoped she would never recover. Julia feels a little differently about that. She detaches from Seliph, who directs a questioning look at her, and drifts along with uncannily more ease than she had demonstrated before.

"Julia?" prompts Seliph.

"Sorry. I wish to be by myself for a bit. Is that okay?"

"Um... Okay, then.” As she leaves, he rushes to add, “But please don't wander off too far! It could be dangerous out there, you know..."

If cherishing her childhood memories of her family bound unbroken made her a bad person, then she would rather be that than hate the man who had fathered her first.


	3. Chapter 3

He treads through the snow-shrouded forest, his sole companion in the soundless scape the soft crunch of his boots. He chases puddles of moonbeams with his gaze in hopes of running away from his loneliness by appreciating one of nature's most breathtaking phenomena, but it always takes him back to Deirdre, and he bumps into the cold vacancy of his heart with the persistence of a metronome. 

Cold though it may be, there’s something consoling about the silence of the pine-scented sanctuary, and it preserves the magic that throbs painfully within him. Being around droves of lively souls can somehow make loneliness feel even lonelier. Perhaps lost in his thoughts, or because she blends in with the moonlit snow, he just about collides with a specter that dwells in these woods. He swallows a ragged gasp and takes back a step just to avoid phasing through her. All of the tension melts easily from him when he recognizes who she is.

"Julia..." He exhales normally. "You gave me quite the scare." He chuckles the last of his surprise off. "I didn't hear you coming at all."

"Oh... I apologize." She looks as much as she says, fiddling with her white scarf, but because he reveals a little bit of cheer for her, she can't help but reflect the same. "I should have said something..."

Arvis then finds it in him to frown. "What are you doing out here, in the middle of the forest after dark?" he chides, brandishing a firmer tone. "You're all alone. Something bad could happen to you out here."

She retreats her gaze to the frost-dappled space between them, repentant. "I know, but... Father..." Though her head remains tilted, her eyes float up to meet his. "May we walk together?" 

Though he feels he ought to maintain his stance on her safety, he runs into a rut when the chill no longer permeates his breast. How can he think of anything but following her when she transforms the moonlight from harsh to soft standing there, precious when she peers up at him hopefully in her fawn-colored winter coat dress, white rabbit fur trim decorating her sleeves and bordering her mantle, which has a sweet black bow pinned in the center? Arvis can't help but smile and relent.

"It would be no good if I just left you here, now would it? Come, Julia. Your company is appreciated."

A pair of matching footsteps crunch the snow as they settle into a natural, subconscious rhythm and maintain a comfortable preliminary silence. No longer does winter bite when the warmth of their mutual company glows like a steaming cup of tea cradled in the hands. At last, Julia makes her admittance.

"The truth is... I saw you out here, at the edge of the forest.”

The idea of her potentially witnessing his private bout of angst embarrasses him a little, but he makes no show of it save hunching into his shoulders. "So you did, did you?"

"Yes. I didn’t know you had come outside."

"But you were having such a fine time out there on the ice. Why put an end to it?"

"I was, but..." She can't fathom the words to express the turmoil she felt inside after Bartre’s blunder. "Well, I've missed you. You're always so hard to find..."

His pathological desire for solitude to nurse the depression that his current circumstances bored into him mercilessly each passing day... Why hadn't he spared a thought for how Julia might feel? That she might care? She had already dashed his worries that she didn't away. And yet... he was incorrigibly human.

"Sorry. If I’m not tasked with Order work, I'm always up to my neck in personal matters..."

Julia knows better than to accept his explanation at face value. It's hiding something profound, like a layer of ice concealing the capaciousness of a lake. She glances up at the rueful dimension of his expression that he intends to shield behind a staid mask. He's trying his best to summon strength before her. Arvis cannot hide his vulnerabilities from Julia: his are a similar shade to hers. Nonetheless, she never presses him to purge his deepest psychological ailments to her.

"I understand. But I would still like to spend time with you more often."

Beneath that simple, earnest statement is embedded a deeper meaning that only Arvis could excavate by comprehending the weight of her past with him.

"And here we are." Recognizing how flippant that might come across as, he smooths it over by adding, "It's a lovely night for a peaceful stroll. I'm glad you decided to join me." Even if she were forsaking her delightful found family, snaps the foulness of his mind, but it never overtakes the gratefulness that she longs to fend his loneliness off. It’s working, after all. The smile she wears after he said that attests to the effect it has on his weary soul.

"It's a good thing I caught you. ...Sir Seliph and the others will worry about me, but... I will make it up to them later."

"I see." He thinks to offer to back her up, but the idea of confronting Sigurd or Deirdre in any capacity plunges hot acid into his stomach, so he checks his tongue on that regard. "It's good that they worry about you. They all seem to adore you."

"They are always so nice to me... I can come to them for anything," she professes on the delicate silkiness of her voice, loud and clear in the near-perfect silence. "Even Sir Sigurd has warmed up to me."

"Was he cold to you before?" he questions cautiously, longing in his wounded state to find a natural catalyst to resent that paragon of virtue.

"I don't think so. Perhaps... he didn't know how to, um, take me... My existence. But once he overcame the shock, he treated me with as much kindness as he does for Mother." Astonishment strikes her features like a thunderclap. "...Ah, I'm so sorry! I should not say things that invite such pain..."

As she predicted, even describing the way Deirdre's rightful husband so properly treated his wife sizzles. He continues his easy facade, flicks a dusting of powdery snow off the bough of a low-hanging branch, though a strangled note remained lodged in his throat. "You are only describing your life to me. It would be dreadful of your own father to hate what brings you happiness."

His own words manage to sting him worse than hers did.

"You say that, but..." She knots her mittens together in anxious tugs as she fights the coldness smearing the corners of her eyes. "I understand..."

The sadness in her voice attracts Arvis's attention, and he turns to examine her expression. It wells up in her like a gorged floodplain. "Julia?" He stops, facing her entirely. "What's the matter?"

She bolts her wooly fists together and fights herself, eluding his bid for eye contact. She hadn't expected him to react in such a way, or so immediately. "Oh, it's... nothing. I just... I mean it when I say I... I understand."

At a loss for ways to comfort her, he settles with tucking a hand at her back briefly to guide her into resuming their walk. "I believe you. The pain you shoulder is more than most can bear. It humbles mine when I remember yours."

"That's not true... Pain cannot be weighed like salt at the market." With a sniffle, she finally stems the tide of her pending tears. "Besides... Your pain... It is attached to my own."

Here she strikes him dumb, like a painting's ability to evoke profundity of a thousand words dwelling in the soul, aching to be uttered but too numinous for mortal movements of the lips, tongue, or even the quill. Or perhaps his speechlessness is a product of the link between them manifesting in a way he had been too trenched in heartbreak to consider before, even for his own daughter. What she said bears a poignant truth.

Why hadn't he arranged to initiate connections with her more often in this world, rife with possibilities never afforded to the fates that befell them? Had he been clinging to the same spiteful thread that was connected to _wanting_ to see Sigurd do wrong to Deirdre, just so he could be knocked down to his level? Or perhaps his absence in her latter years of growing up had cleaved an uncertain gap in his connection to her? And how bound up had he been by his own miserable failings that he sought a reason to suspect Julia would prefer to keep her contemptible father at arm's length? The same girl who chose to attend his lonely side? The same girl who suffered some of the same losses he did, but deserved none of it?

Though summoned in the body of his younger self, he had visions of his future self's fate, and now the memories are all his own. They look less like father and daughter when their age gap narrowed, now closer to siblings than that, but the bonds of seven years remain unseen between them. "...You're right," he finally arrives at. "You do understand. Far better than anyone else. Deirdre... Your mother can no longer be with me." He frowns deeply. “I’ve relinquished her at last.”

Their footsteps carry the brunt of their conversation for a spell.

"...She's trying really hard to remember me," adds Julia with noted sadness, as carefully as Arvis handling the subject, drowning her eye path in white. "I wonder... if she can. But..." Words she has never spoken before, almost as if they were taboo, froth to the surface. "I'm afraid."

"Afraid?” He offers her a sidelong glance in curiosity. “Of what?"

"Afraid that... the memories she shares of me, of you... of Julius, are wrong."

"...By which definition?"

"Well..." It's getting rather uncomfortable to delve into the touchiness of such a topic, but the mood of a wintry stroll helps propel it into motion by its motionless magic, as though time itself had frozen. "Sometimes, whenever she remembers me... us... our family... She seems to be in pain."

Arvis's heart stutters like bobbing ice at the thought. He knows that look. She continues.

"I don't... I-I don't want something as precious to me as the memories we share to make her cry..."

The wet tremor in her wishes betrays her fresh tears, and a sharp stab of sympathy spurs Arvis to stop them in their tracks and look her in the eye. Her tears slip shamelessly down her cheeks as she meets his concern without tilting her face to hide her distress from him. 

There is nothing to hide. Her pain belongs to him, too. Though she’ll never carry the weight of his guilt.

“Julia…” he begins, for lack of any other conversational crevice to snag in the whirlpool of battered thoughts and potential consolations. The young imperial princess dabs at her tears then and tries a hollow smile in the face of his loss. 

“Ah… I shouldn’t ruin our time together with such sadness…” she apologizes. “I would rather see you smile.”

Her warm spirit, her genuine wish for his happiness, bolsters him. No longer focused on his weakness and failings, he shifts to wiping away the pain of someone dear to him, the one person who connected him to the Deirdre he lost. “Smiling, crying… No matter which you are doing, it doesn’t make me value our time together any less. As a matter of fact, you should always feel free to confide your deepest troubles unto me.”

“Thank you…”

“... ...To be honest, I’ve been plagued by my own share of troublesome thoughts. I’m sure that you can feel for the pulse of them with unmatched acuity.”

“Yes…”

He peers off into the sylvan darkness with a somber cast. “Just now, you bore witness to me claimed by them. Here, in this world, I have no ambition of my own, no country nor continent to preside over. My family, claimed by darkness or lost to the war. All that I was has been stripped of me. Even in this world that ties many together, my lot in life is once more relegated to fighting for someone else’s bidding.” His head hangs so that a wavy swathe of his fiery tresses obscures his eyes. “...Tell me, Julia. What do you think of me?”

“You are… not as loathsome as you expect me to think of you.”

“Even with the heft of my treacherous sins?” He sweeps his arm before their path for emphasis. “I’ve laid countless old allies, countries, innocents on the pyre in the name of my ideals, which went up in smoke along with my rule. I’d been blinded by the twisted schemes of a depraved pontifex… stole Sigurd’s wife… executed him thereafter… and even knowing where your mother came from, kept it a secret from her for fear of how she might take what we had done together in light of the truth… That, perhaps, may have been the most grievous mistake of all.”

“Father.” She looks to him with brooked fear. “Do you mean to tell me that my very existence… is sinful? A mistake?”

“...You are not a sin. I firmly do not believe that a person should deserve condemnation simply for being born. It’s wrong.”

That was the entire axis the world he had been trying to create spun on.

“You don’t regret me, then,” she accepts. “Do you regret… Julius?”

He purses his lips momentarily. “That is a difficult question to answer succinctly. I regret having fallen for Bishop Manfroy’s trap. I regret how it made your brother a target for his heinous devices. But more than that, I... regret being unable to stop any of this from destroying him. From losing you. And… of course, your mother.”

“Father…”

As water melts ice into itself, so too does Julia’s grief soften the solidity of Arvis’s barrier against the torrent of his own.

“Oh, Julia…” He collapses into her embrace, and she into his. “Why did it all come to this…?”

“See? You are n-not loathsome if you feel this way! You are more than just your mistakes... You are my father, and I will never be able to hate you!” she proclaims, shaking her head as she buries her face. “And… I may have lost sight of my memories before, but I remember now! And I never want to forget your kindness ever again, even if… e-even if these are the same memories that hurt my mother now!”

“It’s okay, Julia…” he soothes on a jagged voice that he tries to hone for her. “As long as I’m here, you will have someone to remember your childhood with.” He squeezes her close to him, tracing as many memories of her halcyon youth as the span of several seconds allow. “It may be painful at times, but only because they mean so much to me. They were the most cherished years of my life. I’m sure that it must be similar for your mother, as well. And that must be why… they pain her to remember. She lead two lives, each with sorrows and joys all their own. I can say with confidence that you and Julius were her treasures in her life at Belhalla.”

She sniffles, but in spite of that, she smiles into his hold. 

“I feel a little better now, hearing that…”

Part of the magic contained in wintry air is how it encourages prolonged hugs, if not for the comfort of closeness it brings, then for the protection it kindles from the cold. Julia finds herself halfway wrapped in his deep red cloak, and this feeling engulfs her sublimely enough to abate her tears. It pulls her back to when she was four and her father would have to kneel down to envelop her smallness. His arms don’t seem as vast as they once did, but they lack for nothing in warmth. 

In consoling her, Arvis manages to quell the anguish roaring within himself, too. 

“For now, I can put the past aside.” He lets her go. “Especially when I have memories yet to make.”

Julia’s smile could be the reason the moon reflects light.


	4. Chapter 4

Their travels weave them through snow-dusted boughs and strings of conversation pleasant in their idleness. An owl binds them in a short spell of awe as it phases through trees in silent flight; at a clearing, the stars twinkle visibly from the canopy of sky and they marvel at the flecks of brilliance and how the constellations have reformed since they last traced them in Jugdral; Arvis’s head grazes the bottom of a draping branch and pares it of snow, eliciting laughter from the both of them as they wipe the frozen flakes from their hair and faces. All of these are but moments, snapshots of leisure, but together, they form the collage of a night neither will be quick to forget. Eventually, their meandering path returns them to the lake’s shore.

Its barren expanse bears testament to how much time must have elapsed since they first began their stroll. 

“It’s grown awfully quiet out here,” observes Arvis. “Everyone must have tired of slipping and falling over one another.”

Julia raises a trace of a giggle to that, though heat reaches her cheeks as she remembers hers and Seliph’s collective ineptitude. Her father had probably seen that, too. “They must have returned to where it’s warm…”

“I can’t blame them. It’s cold enough for the lake to be skated on in the first place.” He watches the ghost of his breath creep along the pallid darkness. “What say we… hm?”

Julia had tread upon the ice, teetering as she twirled about to face him. He snatches her hand before she can fall, but her rickety movements drags him onto the lake with her, and before he knows it, he’s fighting his own perilous sense of balance, too. Julia skates backwards just to avoid his pending collapse, and Arvis follows her uncertain lead. They skid further from the shore.

“J-Julia, what are you doing?”

“I-I was going to ask if you w-wanted to skate for a bit, but…!” She empties a sheepish laugh. “I guess it just happened on its own!”

Defenseless against her laughter, Arvis allows the good spirits mingling in the air between them to infect him. With their momentum, he swerves Julia so that they spin, hands linked. Just as he had been hoping, any of the glee she may have been suppressing before breaks through, inundating the air with the sweetness of her girlish delight. It prompts him to sift through the sands of his time again. Now, she has become the north star of his fallen world, and the feelings that run for her do not break against an impasse like with Deirdre, but flow into each other. It was a different type of love, but a love he had been needing all the same. Even he falls victim to a few unbridled chuckles unfitting of his age as they hurtle in fast circles round the icy landscape.

“This is fun!” she cries. “A-A little scary, but fun!”

It had been an amusing whim at first, but Arvis soon realizes just how little control he has over steering. Northeastern Grannvale was far too balmy from the influence of Yied Desert and the ocean above for cold winters, so frozen lakes had never been a fixture of his life. He can’t even stop if he tries without a graceless end, and so, for now, he rides it out in spite of that gnawing concern.

“It’s no wonder everyone was falling over themselves,” he remarks. “This is more precarious than I thought.”

“Is this your first time?”

“Yes.”

“Heehee! Do you like it?”

“It’s… quite exhilarating.” Perhaps it is only because of his company that he discovers any joy in the activity, because otherwise he would gain nothing save losing face over the indignities of falling in new and interesting ways. They slow down eventually, but once they do, he has to find his footing again, which he fails in doing. He falls ass-first into the ice, releasing Julia’s hands before she can follow his descent. They both find a bit of humor in this, and Julia starts to wobble, rolling her outstretched arms around to keep herself from tumbling like she had done numerous times today.

“It was bound to happen,” he says through a smile. “Don’t trip, Julia! You clumsy girl. If you do, how will I get up?”

At last, she finds stability. “You’re not allowed to call me clumsy!” she protests as she points down at him. “Do it again, and I might not help at all.”

“Well, if that’s how it’s going to be…” He tries collecting himself off the ice, but ends up crashing back down again. That’s when the resonant snap like a dozen bones splintering in unison ruptures the peace, and Arvis’s eyes blow wide in the alarm that grips him.

“Ah— Father!” cries Julia. She can see where the split in the ice’s surface traveled, a bolt of structural weakness extending from a crater of sharded ice —a familiar crater formed by someone else’s meteorological keister crash not too long ago— that now threatens to shatter beneath the weight of the Emperor of Flame. He lets out a sharp hiss and scrambles away from the protesting brittleness, but it collapses and the frigid lake engulfs him with a sound splash. Julia screams, retreats reflexively, and takes a tumble herself, sliding a short ways away from the fracture. She won’t even permit herself to wince when her eyes are hooked on the impact site, fear clawing at her chest when he doesn’t come up for a few seconds — but when he bobs up from the surface with a raw gasp, she clamors after him in thoughtless desperation.

“Julia, g-get away!” he barks.

“I have to help you!”

“And if you fall in?!”

She stops. If she were claimed by the freezing waters, then she would need to be saved, too. But she can’t just watch him struggle like he is, stroking the surface to stay afloat while he heaves shallow breaths from cold shock; watching him suffer while she does nothing is too much to bear. She swallows the panicked tears that threaten to burgeon and fumbles with her collar.

“But I…”

“I-I can prob-bably manage this on m-my own,” insists Arvis through chattering teeth, settling his arms over the shelf of ice. “So stay back and—!” 

_Crack—splash!_

“No!!” she shrieks.

He breaks another section of ice hoisting his weight up, causing himself to plunge back into his unpleasant bath. He shoots up with another gasp and a grimace, trying to forsake the polar sting so he can continue to ward his daughter off. He flips an icy mop of hair out of his eyes and blinks away agonizing water. “G-Get to safety! Before you fall in, too!”

“But we’re in the middle of the lake!” she protests. “You might freeze to death like this!”

“A-A descendent of F-Fjalar?” he coughs. “Don’t dream of it. But I c-cannot allow you t-to be caught in the wake! ...Julia, d-do you hear me?”

She unravels her scarf and whips it toward him, an adamantine gaze hardening whatever anxiety vexes her expression. Her silence commands him to take it.

“...I’m going t-to drag you in,” he counters.

“Please just try.”

“It’s not long enough.”

This prompts Julia to unbutton her coat. She sheds it off her person while Arvis complains, trembles in her lighter layers against the frosty bite, and ties the sleeve of her coat to the scarf, scooting backwards to extend her reach. Her steely resolve eventually coaxes a shuddering chuckle of disbelief from her father and a shake of his head. He tries again, more mindfully this time, to leverage his upper body on top of the ice, keeping his head above succumbing to any more agitation. He snags it, she tugs. The frozen sheet threatens them with pops and crackles. Julia fights her lack of friction with a bitten lip and all the strength she can muster from her petite form. After the grueling trial, she manages to, with Arvis’s help, free him from his watery prison, and the both of them slide away from the fissure as more of it crumbles away.

“...Haha… I c-can’t believe… that worked…” chatters Arvis on his back, regarding her with weary amazement.

She slouches, chasing her breath. “M-Me neither… That was… hard…”

He comes to her with a few rolls, and then untangles her half-drenched scarf from her mostly-dry coat. “Here… b-before you f-freeze…”

“Th-thank you… But…” Her soft eyes pool with concern. “You’re soaking wet… You’ll freeze first!”

“Julia… Don’t be s-s-silly. I won’t t-take your coat from you. Besides… It w-would never f-fit me.”

He has a point. Julia bundles herself in it once more, wishing she could be of yet more help.

“Then l-let’s hurry… before you get sick!” she decides.

“Or the ice breaks. I th-think I’ll stick to rolling for a while.”

“Me too…”

As undignified as it may be, they roll and slide their way back to shore — at least until they’re a distance away from the devastation they wrought. Then, they make their attempts at bringing each other to their feet again. Poor Arvis shivers himself into an icicle, and Julia’s heart aches for him until they finally do make it off the natural rink and Arvis produces flames for warmth. She huddles up next to him as they proceed to the castle briskly so that they can dry off properly, ideally with some spiced cider at the end of it.

“How was that for a memory?” quips Arvis, lighthearted in spite of his misery.

“I don’t think I will be quick to forget it...” she confesses on flickering laughter.

He frowns, suddenly pensive. “But... you won’t go sharing it, will you? I’ll never hear the end of it.”

She smiles. “I won’t tell a soul.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Julius, under house arrest for being an evil dragon, sips hot cocoa spitefully by the window.


End file.
